Heads of Departments (HODs) are involved in administrative and managerial functions and seems to have several difficulties in overseeing the lecturers since they lacked official in-service training in supervision that may lead to low student pass rates caused by ineffective teaching strategies and flawed assessment procedures. This article evaluates HODs leadership roles in determining academic results in selected private universities in Lusaka district. The survey indicated that HODS were not trained, no empirical evidence on the HODS impact on academic results, a vacuum leadership role by HODS, scanty knowledge and unclear relationship between the HODS leadership roles and academic results. The significance of the study was to examine the actual roles they implemented to enhance good academic results. A population was drawn from four selected private universities where a sample of 48 was picked. Structured questionnaires were used and data analysed using thematic process for interpretations, and conclusion. Findings were that most of HODS had no additional knowledge in management despite rating their leadership high. They performed some of their leadership roles well though totally failed to execute some of them. Nevertheless, the academic results were rated high. The teaching-learning environment was found to be favourable. Despite HODS being rated high in leadership, good academic pass rate, the relationship between the HODS’ leadership roles practices and the academic performance was low. The low relationship between the leadership roles practices and the academic performance could have affected some of service delivery leading to low academic results. In this case the HODS could have used their past experiences; or imitating their role models; or used inherent leadership to influence others to work hard and produce good academic pass rate.
Geofrey Sandala (2026) studied this question.